Mission

The two hands we are given are constructed to hold, control, manipulate and put to use various devices that enable us to function and to build our world.

Our hands can hold implements to build, to construct and to make reality out of dreams and plans.

Our hands hold writing utensils or touch keys to put into words the ideas in our minds.

They can hold, express love, caress and bless those we love.

When we make violence or war our hands grasp weapons of destruction.

Clubs, knives, swords, bows and arrows and guns enable our hands to kill for good reasons or bad,

Weapons can allow our hands to even out or create advantage in a fight.

In a very famous and important confrontation which determined a nations future and began the ascension to royalty of a young boy …….

“There was no sword in the hand of David.”

He was handed a sword that was too large.He was given battle armor which was over-sized and hung on him to such an extent it almost immobilized him.

His life hung in the balance before the giant…..and yet,

“There was no sword in the hand of David”.

The young boy used what he had, what he had a history with and possessing faith and experience built upon on the provision God had covered him with before…

David killed the giant and defeated the enemies of his God…empty handed…. but with a mind and heart full of faith and validated experience.

His hands possessed no usual weaponry but his heart was full of faith.

He was empty handed in the conventional sense of physical warfare…

but the battle was The Lords.

His inner battle was victorious because of his knowledge of and confidence in The God who had provided before…

therefore, his outer conflict with Goliath was merely a matter of acting upon and executing the exercise of his already existent and proven Faith.

“There was no sword in the hand of David”

but there were more viable, though invisible. weapons gifted to him and developed by him which won him the battle.

He executed the physical act of defeating Goliath with his perfect use of the sling. He practiced and developed its prefect use.

He had to execute the exercise….

but God moved in and upon him beforehand.

We, like David, must fight battles and carry out the execution of the exercise…

but God moves in and upon us beforehand.

We may have had to or may have to pick up swords or weapons to defend or defeat in a battle.

However, most of our warfare is not physical….it is, as The Word says… “not carnal.”

In these endeavors there are no swords in our hands.

We, however, can possess what David had.

Assurance

Proven Confident Faith

Exercised and Active Belief

We must fight many battles throughout our lives.

Some physical.

Some spiritual.

Some involve both of these.

“There was no sword in the hand of David”

but he possessed victory in his spirit.

We possess that same victory before any of our battles…

because, like David. our hands may be empty

but we are held in the Right Hand of God.

We may not hold a sword with our hands…

but we can possess…….

the Power of Experienced and Proven Faith

the Position of Established Promises

the Realization of Achieved Victory.

TB

December 2023

Turning 70 about three months ago, I realize that I am most likely in the last 10-20 years of my life.

Being older can lead one to think about life with Joy, Melancholy, Regret or any of several emotions.

One can look with a dimming view toward the end of life or live in the past thinking of “glory days”.

I just watched, again, an episode of THE CHOSEN, in which Jesus visits the wedding in Cana and near the end of the evening performs what we are told is his first public miracle.

He turned water into wine.

It was not just any wine….

It was the best wine of the evening.

The story has more than one attendee knowing that a host always serves the best wine first, then when the guests have their senses a bit dulled, the lesser wine is served and no one can tell the difference.

At this feast, all of the wine was gone.

His mother asked and pleaded with Him to bless the occasion with what she knew He could do.

Jesus had the servers fill the vessels with water and then……He made it into a new and perfect wine.

The feast was enlivened and the guests were blest and surprised because the best wine was served late in the evening.

My younger life had many highlights and some evidence of “good wine”. But, I do not want to serve effort, now, that would be less than “the good stuff” because those around me have their sense of me “dulled” because of earlier or better effort.

Now, in my life…..in this later stage…

I am asking and expecting from that same Winemaker to receive the best wine into this vessel.

The wine that enlivens, the wine which positively surprises the attendees, which gives added life to the occasion, and which glorifies the Maker.

I choose to be filled with the best wine which comes from the hand of the Dresser of the Vine.

With this, I want not to go slowly into the night of life….but to be fully exercised in the mid-day warmth of the shining sun…

better than that….

the shining and illuminating brightness of The Son.

With this, I ask for and aim to be filled with this new, best wine and have my life be enlivened, enriched and emboldened, to move at a full pace through each and every one of my days….revealing the Blessing, Richness and Glory of The One who has, is and will continue to fill me.

There is a passage in The Old Testament I had most likely read before….but did not recall.

It refers to the “bones of Elisha”.

If you know Elisha, he sought after another prophet, he sought the gift and wanted the “mantle” of Elijah to be passed to him.

In 2 Kings , it says that a group of men were burying a friend. They saw another band of threatening looking people coming toward them and so they tossed or quickly lowered their deceased friends body into a grave nearby.

It was where Elisha was buried.

When the deceased mans body touched the bones of Elisha…..

he was revived,

came to life,

and stood on his feet.

Nothing else was mentioned about this man. Like Jabez….a profound statement was made about this person… and we hear no more about them.

It must not matter.

What was briefly mentioned must have sufficed to teach the lesson.

Jabez and the prayer he lifted to God has become the basis for sermons. Books and studies.

This reference to an unnamed and unknown man being brought back to life after touching the bones of Elisha….

must be enough for the reader to gain the intended instruction.

It’s not frivolous.

Resurrection happens only a very few times in the Bible. It most often was relative to Jesus and what He did.

It’s worth paying attention to.

Elisha wanted the gift Elijah had….

and asked for a double portion.

He laid himself prone on a dead body and

life returned to the deceased person.

He was known as a “wonder-worker”.

When he asked for double-portion of Elijah’s gift, the older prophet told him this would be a hard thing.

My thought is that it was not a hard thing for Elijah to grant Elisha the double portion, or for God to allow it.

The “hard thing” was going to be what was brought to Elisha in and because of the gift.

This was a “count the cost” issue.

But with that gift, Elisha changed lives.

He was obedient and active in the carrying out of the gift he was granted during his life…

that he was able to be used by God to bring life back to dead people.

This may not be theoretically correct here…but he was in receipt of so much from God that even after he died…

his bones had resurrection power.

Read 2 Kings 13: 21.

Can the “bones of Elisha” resurrect something in you?

Can you become obedient and pursuant of Gods blessing to the extent this same power might live and work in and through you?

It might depend on what you want?

Elisha followed Elijah, pursued him and sought after and asked for not merely what Elijah had been given…

but twice what Elijah had been given.

He was serious.

At some point we all must get and be serious.

In my life that came at about age 35.

God’s Word tells us we will find Him and all He has for us if we search for Him and desire Him with all our heart.

Getting serious.

Elisha got serious.

And during his life and even after his life…

God used him to bring resurrection to people.

It is not a gift you cannot desire.

This same power can be given and gifted to us.

Has your life been touched by

the bones of Elisha

in some way??

May our “bones” be used to bring light, hope and life to someone in a similar way.

Might happen….if we ask for it.

At particular times of the year, most, if not all businesses, close for a time to take inventory.

Other businesses close at times and bring in specialists to retool and repair equipment.

These businesses give up time in order to check what they have, what has been done, what needs to be updated, repaired or made new.

In these times the business is not doing what makes it money, it is not doing what it is purposed for, nor is it providing what the public needs or wants or expects from it.

Inventory.

Businesses can get over or under stocked, out of alignment to its main task and behind the curve of its progress without knowing where it stands and on what it stands.

This holds true for our lives as well…. in most every aspect.

Every element of our life requires taking inventory on some regular level. In some things it’s a daily task. In others it’s an annual check up.

But we must do this.

Has the last year been productive?

If so…..how?

What made it or led to that productivity?

It was it a failure?

Have you grown in any area?

Are you supplying yourself with the needed elements to achieve growth or productivity or success.

Did you learn anything…or make an attempt to learn anything ?

Are your relationships better?

Have you become a better …..

spouse or owner or employee or teacher.

Have you grown spiritually?

How, Why?

What were some contributing factors?

Did you seek growth and development daily?

Or at some point?

Or at all?

Did you just get by?

Socrates is credited with the statement….

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Inventory is examination.

Of a previous time. Of the stock of a business.

My encouragement would be to examine your life.

Take Inventory….of your progress, of the things you care about, spend time on and give yourself to.

Examine and take inventory of your relationships, of your marriage, of your parenting, of your effort and results at work.

Examine.

If we never do this, if we never “take stock” or engage in an inventory at some interval …we will not be able to judge ourselves, or reason out what changes or adaptations need to be applied.

Take inventory and think about what and who you are and where the “what” and “who” is leading you.

If you ever played sports you have most likely watched video or game films of your teams’ performance. Coaches show and rewind and review the action in order to reveal , to show and to coach away improper decisions and movements while complimenting and encouraging and thus promoting good play.

Review the video of your recent life.

Rewind a few plays, a few days, a few decisions.

Rewind and review why and how you did what you have done….to the positive or negative.

Your examined life can be a better one to live in.

It was the first tragedy in my young life.

The President was shot and killed in Dallas.

For the first time, I experienced death, albeit at a distance. It was a death and a funeral and a National suffering seen for the first time on television, some of it live television.

I never saw my Mother cry until that afternoon coming in from school. She sat in front of the television with my younger brother and cried.

Seeing her emotion, I knew, even more, the gravity of the event.

For three days the country was drawn to the events on television…the stumbling live broadcasts by the network news anchors, the stark image of the hearse at the Washington airport, the awkward words of mourning by the new President, the backward placed boots on the back of an unridden horse in the funeral procession, and then the live shooting of the presumed assassin in the garage of the Dallas police station.

It was the first time in my ten year old life that life seemed to stand still while we watched sadness and grief played out on the television.

It has occurred again since then…

…the assassinations in 1968

…the World Trade Center in 2001

I do not want to see another occurrence.

There was another death on 11/22/63.

It was not heralded.

It took place in England.

Clive Staples Lewis died in Oxford.

C. S. Lewis was the most influential Christian writer of the 20th century.

He did not have the adulates that President Kennedy did, but he was instrumental in the lives of many Christians and those who came to know Christ as Savior.

Lewis came to know Christ as Savior after a young life of atheism.

The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia and Mere Christianity are three books he is best known for.

He might not have been the first to say something similar…. but Lewis’

“liar, lunatic or Lord” trilemma is one of the best know Apologetic comments on the divinity of Christ.

Dallas saw an ugly dramatic event as a young President was murdered.

England saw an older Professor died of kidney failure.

I learned how to sing in
Ft. Worth, Texas from the Music Director at University Baptist Church.

Joe King was was strict, expected perfection and usually got it from all of the Choirs he directed.

He once walked out in disgust because we, the Junior High choir, were not getting it right.

He taught posture, projection, enunciation and the importance of using the diaphragm muscles correctly to project sound

He had some of us practice lying down and popping a ping pong ball off of our stomachs up into the air to understand how to use the diaphragm muscles properly.

Try it.

It works.

Sound needs to be projected to be heard.

We became a great choir.

I became a decent singer and part of that very good group.

My voice was fairly good.

I sang a few solos and duets.

My voice could waiver a bit and was not as firm on each individual pitch or note …..
as it was when my voice paired with another voice equal to or stronger than mine.

I sounded really good when I was part of a duet or trio.
When I harmonized with another …

I was a better singer.

Harmony improved me.

Harmony is unity, connection…relationship.

Harmony is the goal of our spiritual journey.

The One Who sets the melody and paid for the right to do so asks me to harmonize my voice with his and become more than I could be on my own.

He saw a very good and strong
“soloist” who would get off key and get the notes all wrong in Peter.

JESUS saw a zealous and energetic
“vocalist” who thought he had perfect pitch, but Saul was singing the exact opposite notes that Christ led him to carry after meeting him on the road to Damascus…. and changing his name, his mission and his voice.

Peter and Paul, after coming into contact with THE REAL DIRECTOR of the choir we are all singing in,
hit the correct notes,
carried the perfect pitch.

After harmonizing their voices and lives with JESUS …
they became fulfilled vocalists.

My voice,
my life….

are not what they could be attempting to solo the song intended for me.

It is only in HARMONY with the ONE
Who made me

and it is in the harmonizing of the
voice and life given to me with HIS…

that the already written music of my existence is properly sung.

HARMONY is our spiritual goal.

Harmony with The ONE WHO
not only sings with us….
but directs the eternal and
very large choir we are all singing in.

All of life is about HARMONY.

My early life was full and in perfect harmony with my parents, grandparents and my brothers.

The business I am in is better because I am in harmony with one partner who knows more than I do and another who is better at some things than am I.

My personal life is a blessing because since 1990 I have been walking in harmony with a woman God had in store for me.

Perfect harmony was intended, and present in The Garden.

It was interrupted.

HARMONY is what we were created for.

No solos.

In reading something this morning
I saw the words to a song I had heard many times growing up.

The words led me to remember where I heard them and whose voice I heard singing them.

My Father once said that the lyrics to a song would come to your mind much easier when they were paved by the road laid down by the music.

He was making the point that some lyrics to rock ‘n roll songs had a cause and effect to the listeners mind….and that the music opened our minds to the influence of the lyrics.

I grew to believe that myself.

It’s true for any type of music.

When you hear the music….
the words come easier to your memory.

Today…

the words opened the memory road to hearing my Mothers’ voice singing ….

“Take My Hand, Precious Lord”

When I was young and sat with my
parents in Church,
I would hear her voice,
which was good,
singing every song.

I heard the songs ….
in Miami at Flagami Baptist Church
in Atlanta at White Oak Hills
in Ft. Worth at James Avenue
and University Baptist
in Houston at Broadway Baptist
and in Huntsville at
Highlands Baptist.

These churches represent my upbringing
and the songs I heard being sung
and eventually learned myself…
can now be sung by me without a hymnal.

I do like the songs we sing today.

However…..

Theses were the Songs
of my spiritual upbringing.

TAKE MY HAND
BLESSED ASSURANCE
HOLY HOLY HOLY
TO GOD BE THE GLORY
GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS
and the
“almost every Sunday” invitational…
JUST AS I AM.

There are others.

My Mother’s voice
is the voice I hear…

along with hers and my Fathers’…
my own voice has lifted the lyrics to these and other songs since I was old enough at about 6 years of age to sit in Church with my parents.

“To yield in His Life an atonement for sin
and open the life gate that all may go in”

“All that I needed Thy Hand hath provided,
Great is Thy Faithfulness
Lord unto me.”

“This is my story
this is my song
Praising my Savior all the Day long”

“Just as I am
without one plea
But that Thy Blood was shed for me
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee
Oh Lamb of God. I come, I come.

That’s the Gospel ….
and the plea of Paul’s Letters
to everyone who has ever read them.

My Mother and Father sang these songs,
I heard them for 5-10 years as I sat with them…
sang them on my own for many years after…
and began to challenge myself to sing them in the Services…. without The Hymnal.

Singing these songs for years,
I should know them.

Not scripture…..
but they lift the same message as Scripture.

These songs are more than mere words and music..

they have helped form my life.

There is a message behind the lyrics.

The message lying within the lyrics
teaches various aspects of the Life a Believer aspires to live.

The lyrical messages conveyed to my mind and heart by that music allowed me to praise God
before I knew I was doing it
or understood it.

I now sing these
and other Songs
with full understanding
of what they allow me to do.

These allow me to do what the
150th Psalm calls for me to do.

I would do it …
without the Psalmists words.

Remembering these words and rehearsing them today…
led me to know that as

I saw my Parents…
and other Adults in my young world….

praising God…..

I was taught to Praise.

It was not a forced learning.

No one put a hymnal in my hand.

But the lyrics,

traveling on the back of the music

settled in my mind

led and directed my young life

and allowed me a method for honoring and acknowledging
The GOD and The Savior I came to know.

Holy Holy Holy
Lord GOD Almighty
All Thy Works shall praise Thy Name
in earth and sky and sea

Only Thou Art Holy
There is none beside Thee
Perfect in Power
in Love
and Purity.

Since I was twelve years old
I have spent significant time in gymnasiums and workout rooms.

Still do.

Bouncing and shooting a leather ball towards
and hopefully through a metal rim,
running sprints,
lifting weights,
stretching,
showering and changing clothes…
doing it again the next day.

I still do it.

I have learned a great many lessons doing this…
about the balance of life.

Working hard is essential.

Hard work is hard.

It should be.

It yields great results.

Sometimes.

At other times it leads to progress but can result in failures during the process.

But the process leads
to lessons learned
and victories earned.

I thought what I was doing early on was hard work….
but I had yet to learn
how to work hard.

I thought I worked hard.
Sometimes we suffer
for a lack of understanding.

I did.

I learned later on that I worked hard at somethings…
but did not know how to work hard enough at others.

You can be hard at work
but not be working hard.

In college I learned more about working hard than I had before.

As I grew older I actually learned how to really work hard at getting better.

I won Letters and a few awards
and had some success ….
but had I known about
and how to really work hard
at getting better
in my early teenage years,
I would have been more successful as an athlete.

I was not as singularly focused on getting better as I could have been.

I actually got better as I got older
and learned what it took
not just to play…
or to work hard…

but to GET BETTER.

This all came to my mind
last Sunday, the 26th,
as I learned that
the hardest worker
I had heard about in athletics
died on the side of a mountain in Southern California.

He died making an effort to instill that same ethic in his daughter.

When I consider what effort he put into to his athletic career…. I realized I had never put that type of effort into mine.
I knew this after reading and learning over the years about his commitment and unending hours of workouts aimed at becoming what he eventually became.

One of a very few
who could be called “the greatest”.

One of his stated goals….
from all his physical and mental lessons learned….
was to be known
as an “over-achiever”.

Most great ones do not aspire to that humble title.

But he wanted to exhaust himself and max out all of his effort.

He did not fail.

He had astronomical success.

He was so successful he became internationally recognizable merely by his first name.

He sacrificed many things in his unending quest to succeed.

I do not believe I sacrificed enough things to be as singularly focused as this young man
with whom I share a birthday.

I share a birthday but never shared that singular focus toward the exclusion of so many other things for the goal before me.

Spiritually, I have sacrificed
a good many things….
for the goal set before me.

But…..I failed to do the same
for the athletic goals
I thought were important.

I do not know if his early death is premature….in the eternal view … I don’t believe anything is.

But these past 10 days I have felt
a weight in my spirit
because of the ending of his life.

Maybe it was the tragic aspect of it.

And his young age.

And that his young daughter was with him.

I never met him.

I had no personal interaction with him.

However,
I watched and followed him
for 24 years.

I traveled to and paid
to watch him play.

There was great joy derived from watching his successes as his team has been my team since I was 12.

There was great joy derived from his successes because I had aspired to some of those things as well.

I had aspired….
but never did I ever perspire
enough to achieve anything, anywhere near what he did.

After a severe and admitted mistake in 2003…..
which he called “adultery”,
and no one calls it that unless they are approaching it from a biblical sense….

I saw him recover,
work with his wife to save his marriage,
have three more daughters…

have a better second half to his career than the first…

and after having an almost unequaled career over 20 years….

he again worked exceptionally hard and won an OSCAR
from telling a story about his love for his sport in an animated movie.

Four years ago he walked away from a lot of what he could have done for himself

to work hard at being husband and father.

It was the latter at which he was doing when he and his daughter and seven others died on that hill in Calabasas.

I pray his soul is now with The One
Who sacrificed more than anyone ever has….
and won a greater victory than any one ever has.

It was said by the Priest at his Church that he came to Mass early on the 26th….

I pray he had given his life to the One he would have prayed to that morning.

As we try to take from
and learn from those around us
and those we watch…

from Kobe I derived great joy…

and I saw what devoted, consistent.
and persistent hard work does.

And even for a man my age….
I can still take steps forward…

from a lesson learned.

In 2006 my brothers and I were in Orlando on our annual Spring Training trip.

Four days of spring baseball,
NCAA playoffs and PGA golf at
Bay Hill.

We were at Braves Field in their Spring Training facility on the Disney property.

The three of us we standing on the mezzanine watching the game and talking.

An usher with a Braves name tag on came up to us and started talking.

He then turned to me, glanced at my two brothers and asked me…..

“Okay, who did you play for?”

I said, “Sir?”

He repeated,
“Who did you play for?
“Who are you?”

I said, “ I am not really anybody”

He would not accept that and continued …
“ You’re wearing a Players ring… who did you play for?”

I told him did not play in the Majors.

He waved his hand, shook his head, laughed and walked away.

I don’t know who he thought I was.

In 2007, there was a fundraiser at the Convention Center downtown. It was sponsored by the Governor’s wife.
Several hundred people were in attendance.

As we sat at a table with several people, I saw a good friend across what was a very large exhibit hall.

I excused myself, went across the room, spoke to my friend and his wife and turned to walk back to my table.

As I walked toward my seat, two women jumped out of their seats
and one tapped me on the arm, asked to speak to me, and with a smile on her face, said…..

“Sir, I want you to know I support you and am 100% behind you.”

With a somewhat confused grin I told her “Thank you.”

She then asked if she could have a picture taken with me…and gestured toward her friend.

I answered…”Well, uh…I guess…”

She tried to put her hand inside my elbow, which I would not let her do… and her friend took the photo.

After the quick picture, I started to walk off and her friend said, “Thank you so much, and we will vote for you as long as you run”

I believe she thought I was the Governor.

I am sure her friends asked her later who in the world she had her picture taken with …when they saw the photo.

She had me confused with someone she thought she recognized.

These episodes came to my mind this week when I was eating breakfast before going to the office.

The lady who serves me breakfast most workdays told me that as I left the restaurant the day before… a man walked up to her,
asked her who I was,
and told her he thought I had played professionally for a team he followed.

Who did he think I was???

Who did he think I looked like??

I must have a familiar face which reminds people of someone else.

I can tell you what I want to hear at some point.

And it has nothing to do with looks or a familiar, easily confused face.

I hope I hear that someone thinks ….

I remind them of Jesus.

Obviously, it would be
from words, actions or behavior.

I have not looked like Jesus a lot in my life.

My desire, though,
is that some aspect of
my behavior,
my words,
my life as a whole…..

would remind someone of the One
to whose Image I am hopefully being conformed to.

And that is my desire…..
to be conformed to his likeness.

It is a compliment to have someone think you are or were someone well-known.

A compliment is merely a word.

However …..
if I can be seen,
in any way,
to be in the likeness of Christ…

that is a greater reward than any
confused compliment could ever be.

And it could have a greater eternal effect on the one seeing me… than them having momentarily met some well-known person.

It’s about what matters….

not what is merely a perception.